Information technology (IT) is the use of any computers, storage, networking and other physical devices, infrastructure and processes to create, process, store, secure and exchange all forms of electronic data. Typically, IT is used in the context of enterprise operations as opposed to personal or entertainment technologies. The commercial use of IT encompasses both computer technology and telephony.
The term information technology was coined by the Harvard Business Review, in order to make a distinction between purpose-built machines designed to perform a limited scope of functions and general-purpose computing machines that could be programmed for various tasks. As the IT industry evolved from the mid-20th century, computing capability advanced while device cost and energy consumption fell lower, a cycle that continues today when new technologies emerge.
IT software and hardware
IT includes several layers of physical equipment (hardware), virtualization and management or automation tools, operating systems and applications (software) used to perform essential functions. User devices, peripherals and software, such as laptops, smartphones or even recording equipment, can be included in the IT domain. IT can also refer to the architectures, methodologies and regulations governing the use and storage of data.
Computer servers run business applications. Servers interact with client users and other servers across one or more business networks. Storage is any kind of technology that holds information as data. Information can take any form including file data, multimedia, telephony data and Web data, data from sensors or future formats. Storage includes volatile random access memory (RAM) as well as non-volatile tape, hard disk and solid-state flash drives.
IT architectures have evolved to include virtualization and cloud computing, where physical resources are abstracted and pooled in different configurations to meet application requirements. Clouds may be distributed across locations and shared with other IT users, or contained within a corporate data center, or some combination of both deployments.
IT education and job functions
A team of administrators and other technical staffers deploy and manage the company’s IT infrastructure and assets. IT teams depend on a wide range of specialized information and technology skills and knowledge to support equipment, applications and activities. Third-party contractors and IT vendor support personnel augment the IT team.
The information technology profession is extremely diverse. IT workers can specialize in fields like software development, application management, hardware components such as desktop support, server or storage administrator and network architecture. Many businesses seek IT professionals with mixed or overlapping skill sets.
Common IT careers:
Chief information officer: This person is responsible for IT and computer systems that support the enterprise’s goals.
Chief technology officer: This person sets all technology goals and policies within an organization.
IT director: This person is responsible for the function of all of the business’s technology tools and processes. This role is commonly called IT manager or IT leader.
Systems administrator: This person configures, manages, supports and troubleshoots a multi-user computing environment. Within an enterprise, this role can be segmented by technology, requiring an administrator or team dedicated to server, desktop, network, virtualization or other components.
Application manager: This person’s role centers on the provisioning and management of a high-value business application, such as Exchange.
Developer: This person or team writes, updates and tests code for programs to meet business objectives internally or facing customers.
Architect: This person examines and changes IT functions to best support the business.
Continue Reading About information technology (IT)
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Changing careers isn’t as hard as it’s often made out to be, especially if you’ve got the right resources to help you make the change. For many web designers, now is the perfect time to make the switch into UX design. To start with, there’s the monetary boost that comes with the change in career. According to PayScale, web designers in the US earn an average of $46,000 annually(1), while UX designers on the other hand earn a sizeable $74,000(2). Secondly, job opportunities for UX designers are booming: CNN reports that a total of 3,426,000 UX design jobs will be created in the US alone within the next 10 years(3). Furthermore, UX design is a meaningful job, not only because you get to work on a product from the inside out, but also because—as DMI has shown—UX design makes a significant impact on businesses, with UX design-driven businesses outperforming the S&P index by 228%(4). So, where do you find the right resources to help you make your career change? Why, you’re reading one right now.
To start with, let’s have a brief introduction to what we mean by “User Experience”. Products have users, and the user experience (UX) is simply the experience a user has from using that particular product. So far, so good?
UX design is the art of designing products so that they provide the optimum possible user experience. If this description sounds broad, it’s because the nature of UX design is pretty broad. Building the optimum UX encompasses an understanding of psychology, interaction design, user research, and many other disciplines, but on top of it all is an iterative problem solving process (but more on that later).
Broadly speaking, user experience can be broken down into 3 components: the look, feel, and usability.
The look of a product is about using visuals to create a sense of harmony with the user’s values, and that creates credibility and trust with the user. It’s about creating a product that not only looks nice, but looks right too.
The feel, then, involves making the experience of using a product as pleasant and enjoyable as possible. It’s built by crafting the interactions between the user and the product, as well as the reactions they have when (and after) using the product.
Lastly, usability underpins the user experience. Quite simply, if a product isn’t usable, no amount of good looks can salvage it, and the only feeling users are going to have is anger and frustration. Ideally, products should be personalized to user’s needs, and deliver functionality in a predictable way.
If you’re still not sure whether UX design appeals to you, we’ve got some articles that help introduce some of the important parts of UX as a career:
The job title “Web Designer” has many definitions, and indeed, what a web designer does is largely dependent on what the client or project requires. Some web designers simply create visual designs and/or high fidelity interactive prototypes of the website, and leave the coding of the website to front-end and back-end developers. The majority of web designers, however, do get involved with both the designing and (front-end) development of the website. Some web designers even regularly do user research and testing as part of their jobs (and if you’re one of them, you’re already almost ready for a job in UX design).
But no matter what your job as a web designer entails, here are some aspects of web design that can also be found in UX design.
Problem solving
Web designers look to solve problems for their clients; UX designers look to solve problems for their users. Web designers work with a problem solving process: first, they find out the problems their clients have, then design a web solution for them, and then proceed to develop and test the website before releasing it. And after a website is launched, web designers often are involved with further testing the site, collecting feedback from users, and then reiterating on the design.
This iterative problem solving process is similar to the UX design process (shown in the image below). UX designers begin with user research; it’s essential to get to know the potential users of a product and find out what their problems are, how to solve them and how to make users want and/or need that solution. User research is often done via user interviews, observations, demographic studies, drafting user stories and personas, etc. Thereafter, UX designers would create a design solution that solves the user’s key needs, and often bring the prototype back to users to test its validity or usability. After the product is launched, UX designers collect more user feedback, which feeds into a new round of user research, thereby starting the process again.
If you’ve done user research before as part of your web designer job, you will find it a great advantage when making the switch to UX design. If not, don’t worry—you’ll have many opportunities to learn the best ways to conduct user research (read on to find out more).
Emotional design
When designing websites, web designers often make use of typography, color and layout to shape the emotions of users. A sense of credibility could be established, for instance, by using darker colors and serif fonts; similarly, a sense of fun could be created using colorful imagery and playful typography. Web designers are familiar with emotional design; that is, creating designs that elicit emotions from users. UX designers are also concerned with emotional design, but on a larger scale—they are concerned with eliciting emotions from users throughout their entire experience of using a product.
To do that, UX designers work with not only typography and color, but also psychology, motion design, content curation and information architecture. Web designers making the change would innately understand what emotional design in UX entails; they simply need to pick up new knowledge in other areas to augment their ability to do so on a bigger picture.
Multi-disciplinary
Web design is a multi-disciplinary job, where you’d need not only knowledge in design (typography, color theory) but also skills in developing a website (HTML, CSS, JavaScript). Some web designers are also involved in interaction design when they code for animations and interactions using CSS and/or JavaScript. UX design is also a multi-disciplinary field, but perhaps supercharged in that sense. UX designers need to make use of knowledge from the areas of psychology, user research, visual design, and even business to create the best UX for their products.
The Differences between Web Design and UX Design
User-focused vs technology-focused
A large part of your job as a web designer is spent on catching up on the latest developments in HTML, CSS and other coding languages—all of which change and improve at a dizzying pace. Which browsers support what versions of CSS? Would CSS animations work in Safari on a Mac? Don’t even get me started on Internet Explorer! These might be a few questions (and frustrations) that are constantly on your mind as a web designer.But UX design isn’t concerned with technology. Instead, its focus is centered squarely on users—technology is only a means for users to get what they need. Only by focusing on users can UX designers create solutions that cater to the specific needs they have, and ultimately, that users will be willing to pay for. UX designers do extensive user res
earch to find out the most they can about their users, most of which the majority of web designers wouldn’t have had the chance to perform.
UX is more than the web
UX design is platform independent. Its principles and processes are applied to many diverse areas outside of web browsers: on mobile apps, desktop software, and even hardware products and retail spaces. On the other hand, the domain of web design is strictly tied to web browsers. This means that UX designers are able to find job opportunities not only in up-and-rising fields like tech startups, but also in mature and stable industries like car manufacturers. As long as there’s a product, there’s a need for UX—and this really opens up your world of opportunities.
The Big Benefit of Web Design Experience when Moving to UX Design
Relevance of web design background
The biggest benefit of moving from web design to UX design is the amount of overlap between the two fields of design. While it’s true that UX design covers more platforms than the web browser, a sizeable portion of UX design work is still done on products that are at least partially web-based (think of social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, web apps like Dropbox, and services like Google). The overlap between web design and UX design is greater if you’ve done some form of user research or iterative process of continually improving a website with user data.
Being fluent in design and website coding terminologies will also give you a boost that cannot be ignored; after all, UX design is a collaborative process where communication is crucial. Being able to use industry terms while talking to your colleagues will definitely put you in a better place than someone who came from a non-design background.
Aesthetics
Your ability to create beautiful aesthetics as a web designer will also come in handy when making the switch to UX design. Firstly, aesthetics is a great tool to augment your communications with internal stakeholders. As a UX designer, you have to constantly present your findings and recommendations to internal stakeholders (such as the CEO or product manager), and your ability to create visually pleasing reports and presentations will maximize the absorption of your key points.
Secondly, aesthetics plays a vital role in UX design. A common myth of UX design is that great usability trumps aesthetics—but that is far from true. In fact, a study of more than 2,500 participants by the Stanford Credibility Project showed that nearly half of them assessed the credibility of websites based on their visual appeal(5). This goes to show how aesthetics works hand in hand with other factors like usability to bring about the optimum user experience of using a product.
Moving from web design to UX design can sometimes be quite straightforward, especially if you’ve done some aspects of user research in your job as a web designer. For other web designers, however, there is no cause for concern. You’ll be able to make the leap if you’ve spent some time studying UX, practicing some UX skills during your web design work, and constructing a CV which shows your understanding of UX design. If you’re wondering where to learn, there are plenty of options available to you, and we’ve highlighted some of the best below.
Online Courses
Interaction Design Foundation
Don Norman, the cognitive scientist who coined the term “User Experience”, called the Interaction Design Foundation (yes, that’s us) a “goldmine of information on interaction design.” Forbes Magazine says that we offer “Ivy League level education in UX, Product Design or Human Computer Interaction.” Fortunately, that education isn’t at an Ivy League level of pricing. As a non-profit organization, we charge a low annual fee and you get access not just to all of our online learning, but also to the largest specialist design community in the world. We also offer a free library of academic texts from the design industry’s top researchers.
We have three courses (among our current offering of 32) that are specifically designed to help people enter the world of UX design. You’ll learn all areas of UX work and basic skills to practice UX work in Become a UX Designer from Scratch. In Get Your First Job as a UX (or Interaction) Designer, you’ll be able to learn what kinds of experience in UX do employers seek the most, as well as craft a winning cover letter, CV and portfolio that will help you get an interview for a UX design job. Finally, in User Research – Methods and Best Practices, learn the industry best practices of how to conduct proper user research and turn the results of your research into useful action on your product.
You might also want to check out Coursera which is a great source of online learning. Their courses, like ours, are developed by leading experts in their field. Unlike us, however, they don’t specialize in UX and their courses aren’t always available, but when they are, they can either be accessed usually for a fee (on a per course basis).
Udemy
Udemy offers a huge selection of courses in nearly every subject area you can imagine. Udemy isn’t really a training provider, but rather a broker of training created by people from around the world. As such, there’s not much in the way of quality control applied to their courses—while some are absolutely brilliant, many are not.
Classroom Courses
Nielsen Norman Group
If you want to examine classroom courses; we recommend sticking with the “big names” of the industry who provide reliable and high-quality learning experiences. One of those big names is the Nielsen Norman Group who are also one of the best known UX consultancies; they offer a range of classroom based training at various locations around the world. They’re not inexpensive, but if you prefer not to have online training, they’re a good alternative.
You can find the Nielsen Norman Group’s training here.
Cooper
Cooper, a highly respected classroom-based training provider, also provides classroom courses on UX design. They’re also not cheap, but if you’re going to do classroom learning, it’s never going to be as cost-effective as online learning. They do, however, offer a nice range of locations to learn in as part of their service.
If you’ve got plenty of money and time, you could go ahead and get a Bachelor’s degree or a Master’s degree at a university. There isn’t, as of yet, a “UX-only” degree course, and the majority of related degrees tend to focus on Human Computer Interaction.
University is not a low cost option, both in the sense of your time and money you’ll be spending on it. You’ll want to weigh up the pros and cons of a university course very carefully before you decide to go this route.
For instance, here’s how we break down the total costs of a 4-year un
iversity degree:
HSBC, as reported by Top Universities, found that the average US-based university education costs $36,564 a year(6). That includes tuition fees as well as living expenses. For a 4-year degree, this adds up to $146,256—and that’s not counting the costs (such as interest) of getting a loan for your studies.
Then there’s the opportunity cost of quitting work and spending four years at university. That is, the income you’ll forgo when studying full-time at a university. According to the United States Census, a non-graduate earns an average of $27,351 per year(7). Over 4 years, that amounts to $109,404 that could have been earned if you had been working.
Summing up the actual cost and opportunity cost gives you the total cost: a whopping $255,660!
If you think that all the options are confusing, you might want start by examining the return on investment from each type of learning. We’ve got an article here that examines the return on investment from each of the learning types mentioned above.
Networking
The best way to find work in any field is to use a little inside knowledge and get some help from those people already doing what you want to do. This used to be hard work, but today you can simply get online and get networking.
We’d recommend LinkedIn to anyone looking to do some professional networking; join UX groups and join the conversation. Don’t just jump in and ask for work—demonstrate your value first and help people, and look for work only after you’ve built relationships.
The Interaction Design Foundation also offers networking opportunities to both members and non-members. Our members are able to carry out highly specific networking through pre-designed forums that allow for collaboration between large groups of designers. Both members and non-members can also attend our local groups’ community events, which are completely free to attend. You can find out more about the local groups here.
You could also think about getting involved with the design community’s leadership by interacting with them on social media. We’ve provided a list of twenty great designers here that you can interact with online; you can expand that list as much as you like with a little Google work.
Mentoring and Feedback
We’ve found that you can make a career change more easily if you can find someone to mentor you and provide feedback on your efforts. You can, of course, source a mentor from your existing professional network if you know someone who is happy to take the role on. If you think that’s not going to work for you, members of the Interaction Design Foundation’s Design League have access our network of UX design experts and see a mentor from that network.
The Take Away
It isn’t difficult to move from web design to UX design. You can build on your existing skills through a process of education and choose the kind of education that suits you best. Thereafter, you can put that learning into practice as a web designer. The good news is you already speak the language of design so once you have a little practice in UX, you’re going to be ready to transition your career into UX design and join the fastest growing part of the design profession in the world today.
Changing careers isn’t as hard as it’s often made out to be, especially if you’ve got the right resources to help you make the change. For many web designers, now is the perfect time to make the switch into UX design. To start with, there’s the monetary boost that comes with the change in career. According to PayScale, web designers in the US earn an average of $46,000 annually(1), while UX designers on the other hand earn a sizeable $74,000(2). Secondly, job opportunities for UX designers are booming: CNN reports that a total of 3,426,000 UX design jobs will be created in the US alone within the next 10 years(3). Furthermore, UX design is a meaningful job, not only because you get to work on a product from the inside out, but also because—as DMI has shown—UX design makes a significant impact on businesses, with UX design-driven businesses outperforming the S&P index by 228%(4). So, where do you find the right resources to help you make your career change? Why, you’re reading one right now.
To start with, let’s have a brief introduction to what we mean by “User Experience”. Products have users, and the user experience (UX) is simply the experience a user has from using that particular product. So far, so good?
UX design is the art of designing products so that they provide the optimum possible user experience. If this description sounds broad, it’s because the nature of UX design is pretty broad. Building the optimum UX encompasses an understanding of psychology, interaction design, user research, and many other disciplines, but on top of it all is an iterative problem solving process (but more on that later).
Broadly speaking, user experience can be broken down into 3 components: the look, feel, and usability.
The look of a product is about using visuals to create a sense of harmony with the user’s values, and that creates credibility and trust with the user. It’s about creating a product that not only looks nice, but looks right too.
The feel, then, involves making the experience of using a product as pleasant and enjoyable as possible. It’s built by crafting the interactions between the user and the product, as well as the reactions they have when (and after
) using the product.
Lastly, usability underpins the user experience. Quite simply, if a product isn’t usable, no amount of good looks can salvage it, and the only feeling users are going to have is anger and frustration. Ideally, products should be personalized to user’s needs, and deliver functionality in a predictable way.
If you’re still not sure whether UX design appeals to you, we’ve got some articles that help introduce some of the important parts of UX as a career:
The job title “Web Designer” has many definitions, and indeed, what a web designer does is largely dependent on what the client or project requires. Some web designers simply create visual designs and/or high fidelity interactive prototypes of the website, and leave the coding of the website to front-end and back-end developers. The majority of web designers, however, do get involved with both the designing and (front-end) development of the website. Some web designers even regularly do user research and testing as part of their jobs (and if you’re one of them, you’re already almost ready for a job in UX design).
But no matter what your job as a web designer entails, here are some aspects of web design that can also be found in UX design.
Problem solving
Web designers look to solve problems for their clients; UX designers look to solve problems for their users. Web designers work with a problem solving process: first, they find out the problems their clients have, then design a web solution for them, and then proceed to develop and test the website before releasing it. And after a website is launched, web designers often are involved with further testing the site, collecting feedback from users, and then reiterating on the design.
This iterative problem solving process is similar to the UX design process (shown in the image below). UX designers begin with user research; it’s essential to get to know the potential users of a product and find out what their problems are, how to solve them and how to make users want and/or need that solution. User research is often done via user interviews, observations, demographic studies, drafting user stories and personas, etc. Thereafter, UX designers would create a design solution that solves the user’s key needs, and often bring the prototype back to users to test its validity or usability. After the product is launched, UX designers collect more user feedback, which feeds into a new round of user research, thereby starting the process again.
If you’ve done user research before as part of your web designer job, you will find it a great advantage when making the switch to UX design. If not, don’t worry—you’ll have many opportunities to learn the best ways to conduct user research (read on to find out more).
Emotional design
When designing websites, web designers often make use of typography, color and layout to shape the emotions of users. A sense of credibility could be established, for instance, by using darker colors and serif fonts; similarly, a sense of fun could be created using colorful imagery and playful typography. Web designers are familiar with emotional design; that is, creating designs that elicit emotions from users. UX designers are also concerned with emotional design, but on a larger scale—they are concerned with eliciting emotions from users throughout their entire experience of using a product.
To do that, UX designers work with not only typography and color, but also psychology, motion design, content curation and information architecture. Web designers making the change would innately understand what emotional design in UX entails; they simply need to pick up new knowledge in other areas to augment their ability to do so on a bigger picture.
Multi-disciplinary
Web design is a multi-disciplinary job, where you’d need not only knowledge in design (typography, color theory) but also skills in developing a website (HTML, CSS, JavaScript). Some web designers are also involved in interaction design when they code for animations and interactions using CSS and/or JavaScript. UX design is also a multi-disciplinary field, but perhaps supercharged in that sense. UX designers need to make use of knowledge from the areas of psychology, user research, visual design, and even business to create the best UX for their products.
The Differences between Web Design and UX Design
User-focused vs technology-focused
A large part of your job as a web designer is spent on catching up on the latest developments in HTML, CSS and other coding languages—all of which change and improve at a dizzying pace. Which browsers support what versions of CSS? Would CSS animations work in Safari on a Mac? Don’t even get me started on Internet Explorer! These might be a few questions (and frustrations) that are constantly on your mind as a web designer.But UX design isn’t concerned with technology. Instead, its focus is centered squarely on users—technology is only a means for users to get what they need. Only by focusing on users can UX designers create solutions that cater to the specific needs they have, and ultimately, that users will be willing to pay for. UX designers do extensive user research to find out the most they can about their users, most of which the majority of web designers wouldn’t have had the chance to perform.
UX is more than the web
UX design is platform independent. Its principles and processes are applied to many diverse areas outside of web browsers: on mobile apps, desktop software, and even hardware products and retail spaces. On the other hand, the domain of web design is strictly tied to web browsers. This means that UX designers are able to find job opportunities not only in up-and-rising fields like tech startups, but also in mature and stable industries like car manufacturers. As long as there’s a product, there’s a need for UX—and this really opens up your world of opportunities.
The Big Benefit of Web Design Experience when Moving to UX Design
Relevance of web design background
The biggest benefit of moving from web design to UX design is the amount of overlap between the two fields of design. While it’s true that UX design covers more platforms than the web browser, a sizeable portion of UX design work is still done on products that are at least partially web-based (think of social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, web apps like Dropbox, and services like Google). The overlap between web design and UX design is greater if you’ve done some form of user research or iterative process of continually improving a website with user data.
Being fluent in design and website coding terminologies will also give you a boost that cannot be ignored; after all, UX design is a collaborative process where communication is crucial. Being able to use industry terms while talking to your colleagues will definitely put you in a better place than someone who came from a non-design background.
Aesthetics
Your ability to create beautiful aesthetics as a web designer will also come in handy when making the switch to UX design. Firstly, aesthetics is a great tool to augment your communications with internal stakeholders. As a UX designer, you have to constantly present your findings and recommendations to internal stakeholders (such as the CEO or product manager), and your ability to create visually pleasing reports and presentations will maximize the absorption of your key points.
Secondly, aesthetics plays a vital role in UX design.
A common myth of UX design is that great usability trumps aesthetics—but that is far from true. In fact, a study of more than 2,500 participants by the Stanford Credibility Project showed that nearly half of them assessed the credibility of websites based on their visual appeal(5). This goes to show how aesthetics works hand in hand with other factors like usability to bring about the optimum user experience of using a product.
Moving from web design to UX design can sometimes be quite straightforward, especially if you’ve done some aspects of user research in your job as a web designer. For other web designers, however, there is no cause for concern. You’ll be able to make the leap if you’ve spent some time studying UX, practicing some UX skills during your web design work, and constructing a CV which shows your understanding of UX design. If you’re wondering where to learn, there are plenty of options available to you, and we’ve highlighted some of the best below.
Online Courses
Interaction Design Foundation
Don Norman, the cognitive scientist who coined the term “User Experience”, called the Interaction Design Foundation (yes, that’s us) a “goldmine of information on interaction design.” Forbes Magazine says that we offer “Ivy League level education in UX, Product Design or Human Computer Interaction.” Fortunately, that education isn’t at an Ivy League level of pricing. As a non-profit organization, we charge a low annual fee and you get access not just to all of our online learning, but also to the largest specialist design community in the world. We also offer a free library of academic texts from the design industry’s top researchers.
We have three courses (among our current offering of 32) that are specifically designed to help people enter the world of UX design. You’ll learn all areas of UX work and basic skills to practice UX work in Become a UX Designer from Scratch. In Get Your First Job as a UX (or Interaction) Designer, you’ll be able to learn what kinds of experience in UX do employers seek the most, as well as craft a winning cover letter, CV and portfolio that will help you get an interview for a UX design job. Finally, in User Research – Methods and Best Practices, learn the industry best practices of how to conduct proper user research and turn the results of your research into useful action on your product.
You might also want to check out Coursera which is a great source of online learning. Their courses, like ours, are developed by leading experts in their field. Unlike us, however, they don’t specialize in UX and their courses aren’t always available, but when they are, they can either be accessed usually for a fee (on a per course basis).
Udemy
Udemy offers a huge selection of courses in nearly every subject area you can imagine. Udemy isn’t really a training provider, but rather a broker of training created by people from around the world. As such, there’s not much in the way of quality control applied to their courses—while some are absolutely brilliant, many are not.
Classroom Courses
Nielsen Norman Group
If you want to examine classroom courses; we recommend sticking with the “big names” of the industry who provide reliable and high-quality learning experiences. One of those big names is the Nielsen Norman Group who are also one of the best known UX consultancies; they offer a range of classroom based training at various locations around the world. They’re not inexpensive, but if you prefer not to have online training, they’re a good alternative.
You can find the Nielsen Norman Group’s training here.
Cooper
Cooper, a highly respected classroom-based training provider, also provides classroom courses on UX design. They’re also not cheap, but if you’re going to do classroom learning, it’s never going to be as cost-effective as online learning. They do, however, offer a nice range of locations to learn in as part of their service.
If you’ve got plenty of money and time, you could go ahead and get a Bachelor’s degree or a Master’s degree at a university. There isn’t, as of yet, a “UX-only” degree course, and the majority of related degrees tend to focus on Human Computer Interaction.
University is not a low cost option, both in the sense of your time and money you’ll be spending on it. You’ll want to weigh up the pros and cons of a university course very carefully before you decide to go this route.
For instance, here’s how we break down the total costs of a 4-year university degree:
HSBC, as reported by Top Universities, found that the average US-based university education costs $36,564 a year(6). That includes tuition fees as well as living expenses. For a 4-year degree, this adds up to $146,256—and that’s not counting the costs (such as interest) of getting a loan for your studies.
Then there’s the opportunity cost of quitting work and spending four years at university. That is, the income you’ll forgo when studying full-time at a university. According to the United States Census, a non-graduate earns an average of $27,351 per year(7). Over 4 years, that amounts to $109,404 that could have been earned if you had been working.
Summing up the actual cost and opportunity cost gives you the total cost: a whopping $255,660!
If you think that all the options are confusing, you might want start by examining the return on investment from each type of learning. We’ve got an article here that examines the return on investment from each of the learning types mentioned above.
Networking
The best way to find work in any field is to use a little inside knowledge and get some help from those people already doing what you want to do. This used to be hard work, but today you can simply get online and get networking.
We’d recommend LinkedIn to anyone looking to do some professional networking; join UX groups and join the conversation. Don’t just jump in and ask for work—demonstrate your value first and help people, and look for work only after you’ve built relationships.
The Interaction Design Foundation also offers networking opportunities to both members and non-members. Our members are able to carry out highly specific networking through pre-designed forums that allow for collaboration between large groups of designers. Both members and non-members can also attend our local groups’ community events, which are completely free to attend. You can find out more about the local groups here.
You could also think about getting involved with the design community’s leadership by interacting with them on social media. We’ve provided a list of twenty great designers here that you can interact with online; you can expand that list as much as you like with a little Google work.
Mentoring and Feedback
We’ve found that you can make a career change more easily if you can find someone to mentor you and provide feedback on your efforts. You can, of course, source a mentor from your existing professional network if you know someone who is happy to take the role on. If you think that’s not going to work for you, members of the Interaction Design Foundation’s Design League have access our network of UX design experts and see a mentor from that network.
The Take Away
It isn’t difficult to move from web design to UX design. You can build on your existing skills through a process of education and choose the kind of education that suits you best. Thereafter, you can put that learning into practice as a web designer. The good news is you already speak the language of design so once you have a little practice in UX, you’re going to be ready to transition your career into UX design and join the fastest growing part of the design profession in the world today.
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Search engine marketing (SEM) is a type of internet-based marketing associated with the researching, submitting and positioning of a website within search engines to achieve maximum visibility and increase your share of paid and/or organic traffic referrals from search engines.
SEM involves things such as search engine optimization (SEO), keyword research, competitive analysis, paid listings and other search engine services that will increase search traffic to your site.
SEM is a broader term than SEO. Where SEO aims to provide better organic search results, SEM helps you successfully target users of search engines via advertising (paid) links in search results in addition to organic search to send targeted traffic to your website.
SEO and SEM are not competing services. SEO is considered a subset of SEM services. Today, if you want to conduct business on the Internet you need to be visible in both organic and advertised links, which means you need both SEO and SEM.
What is Google Ads (Formerly Known as Google AdWords)?
What is Google Ads? Google Ads, AKA Google AdWords, is Google’s advertising system in which advertisers bid on certain keywords in order for their clickable ads to appear in Google’s search results. Since advertisers have to pay for these clicks, this is how Google makes money from search. This infographic will help you understand how Google Ads works, detailing the Google Ads auction, bidding process and explaining important factors like Quality Score and cost-per-click. If you’re asking “How does AdWords Work?” this page is for you.
Does AdWords (Google Ads) work?
Does Google AdWords work? Depending on the competitiveness of the keywords you’re bidding for and the relevancy of that keyword to real conversions for your company, AdWords may or may not work for your business. For the most part, we’ve found that Google AdWords is extremely effective for many kinds of businesses, as long as they don’t waste their money on the wrong keywords, or write weak, low CTR ads.
The actual position of your ad is determined by your ad rank (Maximum Bid times Quality Score). The highest ad rank gets the 1st ad position. Your actual CPC will be determined by the ad rank of the next highest ad below you divided by your Quality Score. The only exception of this rule is when you are the only bidder or the lowest bid in the Google Ads auction; then you pay your maximum bid per click! AdWords bidding heavily penalizes advertisers who bid with low quality scores. Conversely, those with high Quality Scores get higher ad ranks and lower CPC.
How many times does a Google auction run?
The auction gets run billions of times each month. The results are such that users find ads that are relevant to what they’re looking for, advertisers connect with potential customers at the lowest possible prices and Google rakes in billions of dollars in revenue.
How does the Google auction work?
Once a query is made on Google, the search engine processes the request and runs the auction which will then determine the ad positions and each advertiser’s CPC.
How do you enter a Google auction?
Your Google ads are eligible to be entered into an auction whenever you’re bidding on keywords relevant to the user’s search query. Your bids, Quality Score, and relevance will come into play in determining whether your ad qualifies to display on the SERP.
What gets entered into a Google auction?
Once advertisers identity keywords they want to bid on, Google then enters the keyword from your account that it deems most relevant into the auction with the maximum bid you’ve specified as well as the associated ad.
What is the average cost per click for Google Ads?
The average cost per click on AdWords varies by keyword and industry, but is roughly $2.32 on the search network and $0.58 on the display network. Get more average AdWords metrics here.
What is Google Quality Score?
This is a metric Google uses to determine how relevant and useful your ad is to the user, based primarily on your ad’s CTR, keyword relevance, and the quality of your landing page. The higher your Quality Score, the better: high Quality Score keywords will save you money and earn you better ad rankings.
How does Google determine what you pay?
Costs are determined by your maximum bid, your Quality Score, and the competitiveness of your keyword.
What is Google ad rank?
Google ad rank is the position of the company’s advertisement on the search engine page based on a combination of the company’s maximum bid and quality score.
Ad rank vs. Quality Score
The ad rank is how high on the page the advertisement will be displayed. Quality Score on the other hand is determined by the relevance and usefulness to the searcher and is only a portion of the advertisement positioning process. As of 2013, Google’s Quality score has become more and more valuable as the average quality score has changed from a 7 to 5.
What is ad position in AdWords?
Ad position is the position on the search engine page results where the advertisement appears in relation to all of the other advertisements.
What is Actual CPC?
Actual CPC is the amount an advertiser pays each time a searcher clicks on their advertisement; this number varies depending on the other advertisers in the auction and is always lower than the maximum bidding price.
How does Google calculate Actual CPC?
Actual CPC is determined by dividing the ad rank of the competitor below them (ad rank to hit) by quality score plus $.01.
CPM bidding is based on impressions and can be used alongside CPC bidding.
CPC vs. CPM
CPC is the cost for an advertisement based on how many clicks it receives whereas CPM is the cost for an advertisement based on how many impressions it picks u
p. Both methods can be used simultaneously.
What are Google Ads keywords?
Keywords in AdWords are the words and phrases that advertisers bid on, in hopes that their advertisements will appear on the search engine results page (SERP) when people are searching for those products or services. For example, if you sell shoes online, you might bid on keywords like “Nike sneakers” and “penny loafers.” Keyword research is the process of using tools and data to determine which keywords are most likely to drive relevant traffic to your ads and your site.
What is search engine optimization?
Search engine optimization is the act of improving the visibility of your site or page within a search engine results page through organic methods. This can be done by using search keywords within your content so that a search engine can find and display your site faster and with more accuracy. Site authority and your link profile also play a role in your search engine rankings.
How does the Google display network work?
The Google Display Network or GDN is a very large network of sites that allow Google to place display advertisements, which reach over 90% of all Internet users! Advertisers generally find that Display Network clicks are less costly than those on the search network. And depending on your targeting methods, the CTR’s can be high and the CPA’s low. Try our entirely free, easy to use Smart Ads Creator if you’re looking to get up and running on the display network in a hurry.
What is an ad group in Google AdWords? How do ad groups work?
An ad group is a container for your AdWords advertisements, keywords, and landing pages. Google tends to reward advertisers who create AdWords campaigns with tightly structured ad groups. It’s important not to dump all your keywords into the same ad group, but to organize your keywords into themes.
What is ad relevance in AdWords?
Ad relevance is a measure of how related the keyword you’re bidding on is to your advertisements as well as how much your keywords match the message of your ads and landing pages. Higher ad and keyword relevance can improve your click-through rates and Quality Scores.
How does Conversion Optimizer work?
Conversion Optimizer in Google AdWords is a bid manipulation tool that manages bids at the keyword-level with the goal of trying to drive as many conversions at or below an advertiser-specified cost per conversion (also known as Cost per Action, or CPA).
I advertise on Google. How am I doing?
At WordStream, we’ve analyzed tens of thousands of Google AdWords accounts from all over the world, in all sorts of industries. The easiest way to see how you’re doing at Google PPC is to benchmark your PPC performance against similar advertisers in your industry and spend range. Thankfully, WordStream’s got a free tool for that. Click below to give our Google AdWords Grader a free run!
Tynker has free courses, easy-to-use tools, coding and STEM curriculum, and more to help teachers implement a successful CS program. Teachers can seamlessly import Classroom students to Tynker, assigning Tynker lessons, and viewing grades.
It can be annoying (or even dangerous) to give out your phone number to people you don’t know. But most websites asks for a number when you sign up for an account or place an order. Fortunately, just like with anonymous email addresses and debit cards, you can also grab an anonymous, virtual phone number to mask your real number.
Virtual phone numbers are also referred to burner phone apps, fake number apps, or disposable number apps.
Lifewire / Theresa Chiechi
When you use a virtual phone number, only that number is known, not your real number, even though the virtual number might ring your real phone to establish the phone call. Anyone you call, and anyone who calls your virtual number, cannot see your real phone number.
Below is a list of the best virtual and anonymous phone services that are perfect for both business and personal use.
01
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What We Like
Several ways to buy a number.
Calls show up as your burner number.
Auto-reply can be set up for texting when you’re away.
Burner calls itself the “original second phone number app.” Just sign up for an account, pick an area code to select an anonymous phone number, and use it to make calls and send texts and pics without anyone knowing your real identity.
There are multiple ways to pay for a virtual Burner number. You can do so on a subscription to get unlimited calls, texts, and picture messaging capabilities or you can buy credits to redeem for different kinds of accounts.
For example, you can buy eight credits for $4.99 and redeem five of them for Standard Burner which gets you 150 text messages and 50 minutes of call time; the number expires after 30 days. Or, you could use just three credits to buy Mini Burner which supports 60 texts and 20 minutes of calling and burns 14 days later.
The smallest number of credits you can buy is three, and the most is 25.
Additional users can be reached on the same number with virtual extensions.
What We Don’t Like
Free users are limited to just 100 minutes per month.
Virtual Phone is a service that offers both local and toll-free numbers in over 120 countries and includes features like call recording, SMS, call schedules, voicemail, fax, IVR, call forwarding, and more.
The Virtual Phone setup is really easy compared to the other services in this list. The web dashboard is simple to use for managing your account, and the mobile app makes it easy to send texts and make phone calls wherever you may be.
Virtual Phone also works as a web button so that you can put a special code on your website for your visitors to instantly call you using your virtual number.
You can get Virtual Phone for free with a Forever Free Number that gives you 100 calling minutes or texts per month. If you choose to pay, you get the first 100 minutes or text messages free but then you have to purchase it after the limits.
See the Virtual Phone Pricing page for all the plans, including a pay-as-you-go option.
Download Virtual Phone for Android Download Virtual Phone for iOS
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What We Like
You can try it for free for two weeks.
You can try it for free for two weeks.
Numbers can be used for calling and texting.
What We Don’t Like
No permanent free option.
Only Canadian and U.S. numbers are supported by a forwarding number.
With Vumber, you can choose a virtual phone number from any area code, so you can choose a local one or one from a different area (or even a toll-free number), and it will all work the same.
To receive calls, anyone can call your virtual number and it will ring your phone like a normal call. If you want to make a phone call with your anonymous number, just call your Vumber number from the phone you’ve registered as a forwarding number.
When your phone rings, you can decide to take it, send it to voicemail, play a tone, put it on hold, and a few other options.
Vumber is not free but it does offer a 14-day trial for any of its three plans. The more expensive plans let you have more virtual numbers and additional minutes and texting per month.
Audio prompts can be made for callers to respond to.
Mobile apps are available.
What We Don’t Like
Designed primarily for business users.
Much like some of these other anonymous and virtual phone number services, Talkroute lets you pick a toll-free or local number to mask your real phone number.
However, unlike the others in this list, this service is made especially for business users. You can forward and route incoming calls made to your virtual number to any other phone number or even a sequence of numbers in a calling line to make sure the caller can reach someone.
There are four Talkroute plans you can choose from, with each plan progressively including more features. For example, the Basic plan is the least expensive and does not include caller ID, a call menu, scheduled forwarding, or live call transfers like the Pro plan supports.
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